


Back in the closet again, it seems.

by firefox49



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Awkwardness, Close encounters (tm), Don't worry, M/M, One Shot, Then actual kiss, Trapped In A Closet, You know I love a good Almost Kiss, both perspectives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefox49/pseuds/firefox49
Summary: He pushed the door open, ever so slowly. Except the door didn't give. Frowning, he applied a little more force, hand poised to catch it if it gave suddenly. Nothing. "What the fuck?""As funny as you are, Detective, I don't think now's the time," Nines said with annoyance in his voice as he brushed Gavin's hands aside to open it himself. The skin-to-skin contact lingered in Gavin's brain just enough to make him blink a couple times. Nines couldn't open the door, either. "Shit.""Shit, what?""There's a latch.""The fuck do you mean there's a latch?" Gavin felt his face get hot for some reason. Anger, probably. Yeah, anger. "What the fuck were you thinking?""I mean, there's a latch that fell closed when we shut the door, and I didn't see you coming up with any better plans at the time, smartass."
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Kudos: 46





	Back in the closet again, it seems.

"Someone's coming."

"What?" Gavin whirled around, elbows-deep in some very important paperwork he would not like to be caught rummaging around in. "I thought you said this place would be empty." They were trespassing, technically, in a house a local wannabe mafia was using as headquarters. Like true fresh faces to the crime scene, they were way too sloppy and way too violent. That second part was what was worrying him right now. Their warrant was, strictly speaking, awaiting approval, but Nines had calculated the chance of it being okayed in time high enough to agree to a little B&E in what was supposed to be an unoccupied house.

"I thought it would be. Now shut up." Nines grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the closet behind the desk. Sure enough, Gavin could hear footsteps coming up the stairs.

"Shit," he said under his breath.

"I _said,_ shut _up,"_ Nines hissed just before Gavin saw, through the angled slats of the wooden closet, the door swing open. Fuck. He hadn't closed the drawer. Nines seemed to realize at the same moment. Gavin gave him a weak shrug. _Nothing to do about it now, I guess._ Slowly, he went to grip his gun, just in case. For once, though, he didn't want a confrontation, because dragging this guy in now would mean heaps of evidence thrown straight out the window in court because Gavin couldn't wait a couple days for a signature.

The guy paused, looking at the open file cabinet. Then, shaking his head, he kicked it closed and sat down in the leather office chair. Typical, Gavin scoffed in his head. These idiots always think they're invincible.

He made a few calls, scribbling some things down on notepads and laughing with an inordinate amount of swagger that made Gavin roll his eyes, before making his way back out the door. Gavin thanked the powers that be. It was getting stuffy in there. "Can you tell where he is?" he asked, voice low.

"He seems to have sat down somewhere downstairs," Nines replied. When he talked so softly, his voice had a strange sort of crackle to it, like his vocal chords weren't meant to vibrate so slow. "There are two others with him."

"Fuck. What now?"

From what Gavin could see from the sharp shafts of light in the closet, Nines stared off into the distance for a moment, as if making a calculation. "Our best bet is out the South window. I can go first with minimal damage, and catch you after."

Gavin had some things to say about being caught like a damsel in distress, but decided to save them for later. "Alright, fine. Now?"

Nines paused again, LED yellow. "Yes. They have not moved and seem to be having a conversation. As long as we do not make noise, we should be alright."

"Won't be easy in this rickety-ass place," Gavin thought as he pushed the door open, ever so slowly. Except the door didn't give. Frowning, he applied a little more force, hand poised to catch it if it gave suddenly. Nothing. "What the fuck?"

"As funny as you are, Detective, I don't think now's the time," Nines said with annoyance in his voice as he brushed Gavin's hands aside to open it himself. The skin-to-skin contact lingered in Gavin's brain just enough to make him blink a couple times. Nines couldn't open the door, either. "Shit."

"Shit, what?"

"There's a latch."

"The fuck do you mean there's a latch?" Gavin felt his face get hot for some reason. Anger, probably. Yeah, anger. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I _mean,_ there's a _latch_ that fell closed when we shut the door, and I didn't see you coming up with any better plans at the time, _smartass._ "

"I thought you assholes were supposed to respect humans."

"I will when you earn it, Detective. I'm calling Connor."

"So he can do what? Bust in? We still don't have a warrant, the case is fucked if we're caught here."

Nines let out that sigh through his nose he made when he knew Gavin had a point. Something smug in him cheered. Something gay in him was still in a panicked frenzy.

"The only other options are make a break for it or wait them out," Nines pointed out with a frown.

"They're usually part of the nightlife, right?" Gavin offered, not eager to get shot. "What lame ass criminals stay home on a Friday night?"

"This is true."

A long, awkward silence followed. Gavin could faintly hear the voices of the people downstairs, not loud enough to cover up the noises they'd make breaking down the door. Pursing his lips, Gavin stared vaguely through the cracks of the closet door.

"Guess we'll be here for a while." Gavin felt the closet get smaller even as he said it. Sitting down, there wasn't enough room for the both of them without knocking knees, and he was already uncomfortably shoved against some old-smelling winter coats. "Get comfy," he sighed, leaning against the wall.

* * *

Nines didn't need to "get comfy," of course. His joints were perfectly suited to remain standing for long hours, but there was something undeniably human about shifting onto one hip, or letting one foot kick out to the side when one stood. He kind of liked it. Gavin did those a lot. Right now, he was leaned against the opposite wall, scrolling through something on his phone with one arm resting across on the other forearm, and one foot in front of the other. It was completely impractical. He found it fascinating.

"Is that position comfortable?" He asked.

Gavin gave him a look he could not identify. His eyebrows were pulled together and his upper lip was raised. Usually those did not mean good things. "Yeah? What, is my posture not good enough for you, either?"

"No," he answered truthfully. "Just curiosity."

Gavin seemed to consider that. The slanted lines of light fell across his face at a 27.4º angle as he did so. They were fainter now than they had been before; the sun was nearly set. "Hmm," was his reply. "Guess our human joints don't work like yours, huh."

"You cannot detatch your limbs, so no, I don't imagine they do."

That earned him an exhale out the nose and a smile. Connor had informed him this was a sort of first degree of laughter. That was better than the pinched eyebrows. "Yeah, our joints suck shit. Can't stand like we've got a stick up our ass for so long like you people." Nines perused a few thousand articles on joint health, as well as confirming the definitions of a few colloquialisms before responding.

"I stand like I have a stick up my ass?"

"Dude, absolutely," Gavin chuckled. Nines liked that he used the word _dude._ According to all his sources, it was a term of endearment. Not something he got very often. It felt nice to be endeared upon. "I mean, no offense or anything."

"I simply maintain proper posture. It is the healthiest option long-term. Perhaps this is why your joints, as you say, suck shit."

"Maybe," he mused. "But people do a lot of stupid things to fit in. Drugs, alcohol. It all fucks you up. But business stays booming, anyway," he said, gesturing to the file cabinet full of red ice transactions.

"This is highly illogical."

"Not really, if you think about it," Gavin replied. "Humans are social creatures for a reason. We're not good at much, physically speaking, so the cavemen that didn't stick together were picked off. Then, bada bing, bada boom, evolution happens."

"Humans no longer have natural predators, besides themselves, of course."

Gavin shrugged. "Sure, but everyone's a creature of habit, in the end. Even stick-up-the-ass assholes like you."

"This is not true."

"It absolutely is, and you know it." Gavin wagged a finger at him, raising an eyebrow. Oddly, a new mission popped into his HUD. Since deviation, the only missions in there were the ones he'd written himself. It said "Get Closer to Gavin Reed." Frowning, Nines shook his head as he cleared it.

"It is!" Gavin insisted, apparently taking his head shake as denial. "Do you or do you not drive down tenth to work. Even though the traffic is better on eleventh."

"The quality of traffic is irrelevant," Nines said. "If I enter stasis at 2300 and charge for seven hours, I awake at 0600, which is the optimal time for me to prepare for work, still leaving at the same time."

"So you made a habit, and don't want to break it," Gavin said plainly. Nines just sighed through his nose. He didn't even have to breathe, it was just the more civil way of expressing his frustration. It seemed to make Gavin laugh, though.

"You're more like us than you'd like to admit, tin can."

"I am surprised to hear you say that."

Gavin seemed pensive after that. Wordlessly, he turned his head and stared through the narrow slats in the door. His profile was what Nines could only describe as striking. "Hold Gavin Reed," his HUD said, unhelpfully. "No, shut up," he told it.

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

Gavin pursed his lips before deciding to drop it. "Yeah," he sighed. "Six months ago, I would have vomited at the thought of saying something like that." He scratched the back of his neck. Nines identified this as a comfort response, something people did to soothe themselves when uncomfortable. "I guess-- I guess you've taught me a lot, huh," he half-laughed at the end. Nothing funny had happened, though, which confused Nines.

"Well, I have access to several terabytes of knowledge, Gavin, I could teach you many things."

Gavin rolled his eyes, but was smiling anyway. Nines calculated this as a net positive expression. It suited him. "Kiss Gavin Reed," said his HUD. He blinked hard to shove it out of his vision.

"I have also learned from you."

"What, like the opposite of what people are supposed to be?"

"Among other things. The devastating effects of caffeine addictions, for example. Or, why in the hell someone would do something so illogical as to own a cat."

"Hey now, don't bring my cat into this."

"See? Illogical. Your cat neither knows nor cares that I just made fun of it."

"Yeah, well." Gavin was staring straight at him, now. There was something strange about his expression. His chin wasn't jutted as far up as it usually was when he looked at Nines. It didn't do anything to make him seem taller in the first place, anyway. There was something more accessible about this, though. "I'm sure you'll get it someday."

Nines couldn't help but stare straight back. The eye contact unsettled him, almost, but he didn't want to break it, either. "Kiss Gavin Reed." No. "Kiss Gavin Reed." No. "Kiss Gavin Reed." "Will you fuck off already?"

"Um, I-"

"No, no-" Nines felt his face warming up, which was very odd. He had to turn his homeostatic system to manual to slow his thirium pump back down. "Not you. Bugs in the software." It was a lie, albeit a white one. Nines hated lying, especially to Gavin, but "bugs in the software" was much easier to explain than "something in my programming is very horny for you."

"Oh. Got it." He looked away again. Nines had the sinking feeling that he had missed something, but he did not know what it was. It was unsettling. He didn't like not knowing.

**Transmission requested by Unit RK800 "Connor", initiated 21:45:03.**

* * *

Nines' LED went yellow after that, and he seemed to do that zoning out thing when he was analyzing something. He was silent for a long time.

Gavin didn't know what had gotten into him. He was sure he'd just looked like a fucking idiot, gaping like it was his first crush. Like that awkward moment in your teens right before your first kiss. Fuck. And Nines had _noticed,_ too. Double fuck. And judging by the voices downstairs, they wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. It was barely ten, he said, cursing inwardly. This was not going to be fun.

"We got our warrant."

"We what?"

"You are perfectly capable of having heard me. Hank and Connor are on their way."

"Damn, really? Don't they have anything better to be doing?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Of course they do. I interrupted their dinner when we got stuck, and Connor secured the warrant for us."

"What did he do?"

"It is best if you maintain plausible deniability."

"Prick."

They waited in silence for Hank and Connor to arrive. Gavin wished they'd hurry the fuck up. Had he wanted to, he could have cut the air between them with a butter knife. He had the urge to say something to make the silence less awkward, but couldn't think of anything that wasn't stupid. Finally, Nines whispered that they had pulled up, and to be ready.

"Naturally, when we're done here, the official story is that the four of us entered the building at the same time, after receiving the warrant, and discovered the business records after arresting them."

"Yeah, like that makes any sense."

Nines shrugged. "I didn't say it was a good story. The chances we are called out on it are sufficiently low."

"Yeah, just like the chances this house would have people in it, right?"

"... I will be glad to get out of this closet."

"Still won't be able to shut me up. 'Low probability,' my ass."

"You're such a pain."

"What are you gonna do about it?"

* * *

"Kiss Gavin Reed," supplied his HUD. Nines shook it off and narrowed his eyes. "Maybe I will make you." He got closer, in an attempt to be intimidating, but the expression on Gavin's face was far from afraid. Instead, Gavin stood stock still, letting Nines get closer and closer. Nines could feel his breath on his face.

"DPD, on the ground!" came the shouts from downstairs. Both Gavin and Nines jumped back, as if shaking off a daze, just looking at each other with equally startled expressions. Nines took a moment to delete all of the Kiss Gavin Reed prompts so he could see clearly enough to bust the door open. From the sound of his footsteps, Gavin followed.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I can't really find it in me to finish this, so if anyone wants to write their own ending just credit this work!!! <3


End file.
